


until my dying day

by feelingsmall79



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Drug Use, M/M, Murder, Smut, Suicide, seriously just be aware
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-07-14 03:56:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16032491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feelingsmall79/pseuds/feelingsmall79
Summary: it was inevitable, maybe





	until my dying day

**Author's Note:**

> i started this in summer 2016 and it was supposed to be longer but i don't have the energy i just want it out there. taxi cab is one of my favorite songs and this is what it makes me feel like

they're in a church somewhere in Nevada when Tyler first says it out loud.  
"I want to die with you."  
the vaulted ceilings above them are cool and dark, and sunlight is oozing like honey through the high narrow windows, cutting drapes of light across the still room.  
josh breathes deeply, watching how the dust motes dance in the light that falls just in front of him. he and Tyler are sitting in the first pew, the only ones in the whole building. the dais before them is dusty, modest. what you'd expect from a small town in the middle of nowhere.  
"josh." Tyler is looking at him, he can feel it. the whole bench is vibrating ever so slightly with the bounce of Tyler's leg. these days, josh can't remember if the bounce or the drugs came first.  
"josh, did you hear me?"  
he doesn't look at Tyler, doesn't say anything.  
Tyler smiles just a bit, turns to address Jesus, staring down at them with honey brown eyes from way up there on the wall. "he'll come around eventually."

***

the next time it comes up, Tyler has just done three lines and josh is splayed out sweaty and vulnerable and so drunk he can't see straight beneath him.  
Tyler's whole body is taught, waiting to break or be broken. the world is blurring around josh, and the sheen of sweat on Tyler's skin catches the dingy motel light and makes him shine. like a halo, Josh thinks. like he belongs somewhere other than here.  
Tyler shifts inside him, his gaze fixed on josh as if he can't breathe without him. Elbows braced on either side of Josh’s head, their bodies sticksliding together, and when he speaks, josh feels it along every inch of his body.  
"I want us to die together." Tyler’s voice is low, rough, leaves Josh's very skin feeling raw. Nothing makes sense, nothing is clear but blurs of light and tyler’s face. "I can't go without you. go with me, baby"  
His whole body shudders as Tyler grinds deeper into him. he's taken josh apart so brutally tonight, handcuffing him and leaving claw marks along his chest, that the sudden slowness is nearly suffocating.  
Tyler buries his face against Josh's throat, thrusting into him again, panting. "go with me, baby. go with me." he repeats, and there is no breath left to him as the pace picks up slowly. Tyler's hands are gripping his biceps now, his mouth hot and wet and open against his neck. josh groans, wraps his legs around Tyler's waist to pull him deeper, deeper, deeper.  
"I'll go anywhere with you," he pants, tangling himself in every part of tyler, and then he can feel Tyler coming, spasming against him, the lines of his body tense and glowing in the dimness of the room. the heat and closeness overflows and crashes, wave after wave, through Josh’s body as he comes in between their bodies. Tyler is gripping him so tightly it hurts, cradling the back of his head and holding josh to him.  
"promise me," he breathes out, sounding so vulnerable that josh thinks he can see tyler's heart lying bare in those words, can hear his very pulse in the syllables.  
"I promise." ipromiseipromiseipromise

They’re in Ohio, saying goodbye, when josh understands. It’s been a month since the warrant was put out for tyler’s arrest and he’s dizzy and terrified half the time and tyler is high all the time and it’s not a good life but it’s a life and he’s with tyler so. So it’s okay, he guesses.  
Tyler called him at 3 am the night of, desperate and hysterical and gasping into the phone like a panic attack but worse. Somehow worse.  
And when he said he killed a guy, josh was too half asleep half in love half afraid to register the finality of it. The inescapable end encapsulated in the words “I just stabbed him josh I didn’t know what to do, he would have killed me -”  
And so now it’s here, as they stand across the street from the shingled two-story in Columbus in the gray-silver shifting light of pre-dawn, that he understands what tyler was saying. Why tyler needs to know that josh will go with him. That tyler has no intention to survive. That what he has done is the death sentence no legal system would impose. That he will die by drugs or by prison or by his own hand, but he will not continue.  
Josh feels suffocated by the mist. He chokes on a breath, grabs tyler’s hand like grabbing a life raft - but no, that’s not right, is it? Grabs tyler’s hand like he’s on his death bead and tyler is morphine, grabs tyler’s hand like he knows it’s a death sentence and he doesn’t care.  
Tyler turns toward him, eyes glazed with cocaine and tears, looking like a burned out fort erected on the sight of his previous self. He’s not who he was but he’s who josh knows and that’s when he accepts it.  
“Will you go with me?”  
“Yes.”  
Jsoh wonders if there’s a different way, but he knows it doesn’t matter. This is what they were hurtling towards all along, wasn’t it? 

***

in the cool morning air there's a sense of calm that josh hasn't felt in weeks. there's a softness in knowing, in being sure. a steadiness.

Tyler hasn't said anything since they crossed into Arizona, his fingers still tight on the wheel, his nervous energy settling into a vibrance that almost blurs his edges. josh can't keep his eyes off him as the first edges of light crop up from the horizon. the sunrise tempers the glare from the dashboard, and in the forgiving glow of the new day, Tyler looks whole again.  
josh is aching.  
he's aching with this, this moment, this feeling. the feeling of a thousand mile horizon opened up ahead of them, of mountain slopes to the east just catching the first fiery rays of light. the windows are down and the air is whipping in at 100 miles per hour but the warmth makes it gentle. caressing. Tyler's profile is catching the light, his skin catching fire, and josh thinks maybe this is the way Tyler was meant to be seen. for once, not self aware. for once, giving himself space. lit up at every edge and coated with the belief that comes in early morning. driving toward the morning sun, all the blood washed away. nothing more to be undone.

there's an easiness in letting go that josh never could have imagined.

Tyler is accelerating and josh realizes - well. this is it, isn't it?  
his heart is beating so hard, so desperately, as though something so caged could save someone so free. "there's no need to be afraid," josh whispers to himself. to his heartbeat.  
he can see the rim of the canyon up ahead. there's something so strange about it, so powerfully peaceful. the vast emptiness where earth once was. the purity of nothingness where there was once the weight of a thousand tons of dirt.  
Josh's heart beats faster.  
"where do you think we're going?" Tyler calls out over the wind. the odometer is touching 120 now, the whole truck rattling and creaking. he glances over at josh and for a second josh can't breathe - Tyler is breathtaking. luminous. the life in his eyes is vast and hungry and so different from the frantic sweatiness of the drugs. so much freer than the desperation. he's grinning, electric, grabbing Josh's hand across the center console as the land tears away beneath the wheels. "where do you think we'll go?"  
josh is breathless in the wind, in the face of Tyler. he gulps, looks out his own window, back towards where they came from. the horizon to the west is still soft, darker. not quite yet awake. for a second, a split second, he feels scared. small. for a second, he wonders if maybe they were wrong.  
then Tyler squeezes his hand, pulls his attention back. "it's okay." he's not yelling anymore, simply speaking in a voice that josh has only heard when he's really high or really sober. somehow josh still hears him, over gravel and earth spitting up at them and the wind whipping around their ears. "this is right." Tyler isn't watching where they're going anymore. he doesn't need to. the edge is less than a mile away. "this is right, you know it."  
josh does.  
josh knows.  
josh lets go.

the edge of the world bears down on them, and josh holds Tyler's hand. the other boy is whooping into the wind, his other arm thrown wide out the open window. he is washed clean in the morning, spilling out of his lines into the early morning air till all josh can feel is Tyler around him.  
the edge is so close.  
josh closes his eyes against the wind that feels cold with their speed. he leans up and out of the window, the breath swept away from him, the first rays of sun just breaking over the horizon. he inhales as deeply as he can, feeling something expand within him - expand till its pressing against his ribs, and then break past them, expand and expand till the whole world is enveloped in his one breath. he inhales until he can feel Tyler in it too, and then he screams it back out. he can almost see the exhale wash over the horizon, see his breath turned to steam as it collides with the sun. and he can see the edge, directly in front of them. and then emptiness.  
Tyler pulls him back in then, pulls him back just enough so they can look at each other. "don't be afraid." he says, so soft. so full of light. "don't be afraid"  
josh breathes in again, breathes in the whole world. he feels the truck wheels spinning desperately as they hit the edge, feels the desperate moment before the plummet expand between them for a small infinity. he is looking at Tyler and he is looking and there is gold haloing the whole world and the air is like liquid silver pouring into his lungs and Tyler is so beautiful. Tyler is so beautiful.  
"I'm not" he says, in the split second that they are not yet falling, that they are flying. "im not afraid. we're going home"  
Tyler's smile breaks like day, and then the truck begins to fall.


End file.
